Think Forward: Conversations with Futurists, Innovators and Big Thinkers
Welcome to the Think Forward podcast where we have conversations with futurists, innovators and big thinkers about what lies ahead. We explore emerging trends on the horizon and what it means to be a futurist.
Think Forward: Conversations with Futurists, Innovators and Big Thinkers
Think Forward EP 131 - Future of Flight with Catherine Roy
Catherine Roy, a designer turned strategic futurist at Thales, reveals that flying taxis and advanced air mobility face substantial social acceptance challenges beyond mere technological hurdles. Her research identified 62 criteria for social acceptability of air taxis, demonstrating the complexity of successfully introducing this transportation mode.
We touch upon many things in this episode including:
- How she transformed into a strategic futurist leading global design networks
- Research found 62 social acceptability criteria for advanced air mobility versus industry's focus on just 7-8
- Urban planners view flying vehicles as extending traffic problems into the air rather than solving mobility issues
- Capacity limitations make eVTOLs inefficient compared to mass transit (only 0-125 passengers/hour in 2040 projections)
- Entire infrastructure including vertiports and communication systems would need building from scratch
- Flying vehicles could increase social stratification between wealthy "skylanders" and ground-dwelling "flatlanders"
- Future climate priorities may overshadow investments in advanced air mobility infrastructure
- Innovation requires developing unique perspectives and courage to stand your ground against mainstream thinking
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Thank you for joining me on this ongoing journey into the future. Until next time, stay curious, and always think forward.
Welcome to the Think Forward.
Speaker 2:Show.
Speaker 1:Let's explore the future together.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Think Forward Show. I'm your host, steve Fisher, and today we're taking flight into one of my favorite topics the future of aeromobility. Joining me today is the brilliant Catherine Reid. She's a designer turned strategic futurist who's been reshaping how we think about tomorrow's skies, from flying taxis to AI co-pilots. Catherine's research into the social acceptability of advanced air mobility has uncovered fascinating insights about what it will really take to get our collective wheels off the ground. Will we all be zipping around in personal aircraft by 2040? Or is the dream of the flying cars destined to remain perpetually just a few years away? Like fusion power and my ability to assemble IKEA furniture from leftover parts? Like fusion power and my ability to assemble Ikea furniture from leftover parts? So buckle up as we navigate the technical challenges, regulatory hurdles and human factors that will determine whether our future involves traffic jams or jet streams. Welcome to episode 131 of the Think Forward Show the future of flight with Catherine Reed. Catherine, welcome to the show.
Speaker 1:Hey, hello, hey, hello.
Speaker 2:So there'll be probably lots of laughing and giggling, since we know each other well, but many listening to the podcast may not know who you are, so we always start with the journey.
Speaker 1:Yeah are.
Speaker 2:So we always start with the journey. So, yeah, what's your journey into futures? Work, design futures, uh, you know kind of experiences with uh tales. Actually, it's a you know what's the best pronunciation of the I told you about it.
Speaker 1:Well, this is one of many conversations that we've had, but uh, it's talus talus or the way that, yeah. The way that the French people pronounce it is Talis.
Speaker 2:Talis.
Speaker 1:Yes, that's correct.
Speaker 2:Talis, yes, so let's talk about that. So, yes, your journey. So where did it all begin?
Speaker 1:Where do I start? Okay, yeah, so I'm a designer. I've always been. When I was young, I used to draw a lot and my favorite play was to create houses that would have been different house plans and so on. So I've always been a designer all my life. I was trained as an industrial designer when it was not the norm, and then I moved into, or always was, a UX designer, but then at that time that was not easy to find jobs in UX, I would say. So I did a bunch of different things and started my own company about when was that like?
Speaker 2:about when was it hard to find?
Speaker 1:uh, that was really hard to find at the at the beginning of the 2000 uh, yeah finding a job in design, especially in digital products and so on.
Speaker 1:That was very, very tough to do, uh, so, so I did a bunch of different things in marketing, communication and so on, and then I moved into a little bit of ergonomics or human factors at that time, what they used to call it and I could not really find something that I really liked.
Speaker 1:So I decided to do my own, my own thing, and start my own company. And then I got um, alice was one of my client, um, one of my clients back in the days and then they wanted to to build their own design force in North America. And, uh, at that time I was tired of doing the same projects over and over again, and probably some freelancers could relate that you get tired of your own business sometimes. So it took me a while to uncouple my identity to my business and then I joined TALIS in 2019. And now it's been almost six years now, but then I contracted before that for two years before. So roughly six to eight years that I've been with them. You know it's quite a journey, because I'm an entrepreneur at heart and it feels that, you know, it's been a long time.
Speaker 2:You've been building out the strategic design capacity in North America. What does that look like?
Speaker 1:It's to be able to work with our different business lines in the region and try to work with them on their strategic design capacity and capabilities in the region and innovation. Mostly Most of the products they're in France, so it's a nice dance between what's happening in the region and also what's happening in France. So what are the different product lines doing? How they can be more marketable or specific to the US market and the Canadian market. So this is what I'm doing and, on a global scale, I lead the strategic design activities and network for the Design Center Network that was started 12 years ago by Didier Boulet in Paris. So he built the first studio and then it got into now almost 14 design studios around the world. So we cover every region and we cover also different verticals that Dallas has, different verticals that Dallas has. So, for example, aerospace, defense, identity security, cybersecurity and so on.
Speaker 2:Do the different organizations in different parts of the world, how do they connect with each other? How do they work together? Do they share certain resources? Is there a shared mindset, like how do they work together to make it more efficient?
Speaker 1:yeah, so this is definitely a shared mindset. Uh talus group is a group of different uh entities, so each have their own verticals, their own market, they have their own products and so on. And through the Design Center Network we try to share the same mindset, share the same tools and methodologies, share best practices, share knowledge of what's happening within our own projects, but then see also how people solve within their own constraints or their own domain. And sometimes we can have synergies between design centers. So let's say that there's a specific subject design center. So let's say that there's a specific subject. So sometimes we're going to have two design center collaborating on that same subject could be defense and security, for example, so they both have a product or an interest into that business.
Speaker 2:Interesting Because it's. Is there a set of processes that everyone is really working front Like? Is there a set of like? Do you have a design language? Do you have a design system? Right? Is there certain things? We're building that, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, so we're building that, so this is something that it's, that it's increasing. So Talus is, uh, it's an engineering company and technology company at heart. So, of course, the, the, the design, um, uh elements and aspects. They started as grassroots movements, such as a design centers within those entities, and then they grew organically uh with again the same set of tools, the same mindset, uh a location mindset and uh design thinking methodologies. Uh, they also they also share uh the same offer, uh the the, the same uh way of focusing on human first uh, and this is really, um, this is a really added value to what talus is doing, so, really technology focused. And then we bring in the uh the, the human aspect, the design aspect, uh the aspects, or again, the needs and the innovation through the human experience. Yes, yes, yeah.
Speaker 2:Because humans the need, you know, because you're obviously you're interacting with physical objects, not just digital, right, correct? Yeah, so it's like how many people work in that space, but it's a different set of interactions, things you need to look at, and it's also more expensive to change something physically in terms of the experience, correct?
Speaker 1:And then to go back to your first question, it was about the same language and the same tool, so this is something that it's been increasingly important in Site Talent. So the same visual language, but also the same physical language for physical products and so on. Same physical language for physical products and so on. So this is very instrumental in increasing the design footprint within the company. I think, of companies like BMW right.
Speaker 2:When you see a BMW, you get inside of a BMW. You know it's a BMW.
Speaker 1:Yes, right, it's very different.
Speaker 2:Yes, it's a BMW. It's very different. There's distinct, there's aspects to it that are across the entire design, the line of design. That's just one of many examples. Right, the thing I was as futurists how do you use that to inform the work Like, do you? Do you bring it in directly to exercises? Do you have specific, like a work stream of futures work signals to kind of bring in uh in to inform the work that you, that you all do?
Speaker 1:Yes, well, the uh, the work specifically that I've been doing for the past couple of years is all about futures work. So it's really foresight work that I'm doing. I'm not necessarily designing on products per se. So for the past four years I'd say I've been extremely focused on the environmental and social and different impacts of the like. And then my outputs they're mostly related to strategic opportunities or business opportunities that we can explore and then they become design thinking projects that we could look to see if there's something interesting to build from that.
Speaker 1:One of the projects that I've been doing that it got a lot more concrete is about the future social acceptability of the advanced air mobility, and I think this is one project that you would find really interesting for your aerospace, of course. So we were able for that one to go from the design not from the design, but from the foresight perspective up to a concrete set of tools for the industry wishing to implement AAM. So AAM is Advanced Air Mobility Projects in a social context. So this one went from the foresight perspective up to the tool. Some of them they just go to the opportunity and sometimes we go the other way around.
Speaker 1:Let's say that we have a technology that we want to build. So then we want to make sure that we know the right usage in the future for that technology to happen. So, for example, it could be AI assistants inside cockpits, so what it means for a pilot, for example, to collaborate with an assistant. So how do we make sure that we build that trust at that specific time for particular decision moment? So this is how we're going to use foresight. So we're going to set the context and they're going to be in scenarios, and then we're going to bring the technology into that context to make sure that they make sense.
Speaker 2:Well, I was about to ask you, let's talk about flying cars. So my favorite subjects I know, I know. Yeah, I had an air taxi company 20 years ago.
Speaker 2:That was way ahead of my time. But you know, I've spent a lot of time on AAM and I almost feel like the concept of flying cars is just like. I don't say it will never come, but I think socially it's just not. You watch people drive on the road and you imagine these people in the air. Well, obviously, it would have to be controlled by a third part a pilot. It's interesting when you talk about an assistant, like would people get? And those listening, think about Uber, right, would you get inside a car that didn't have a driver? Would you get inside a plane that didn't have a, you know, physical, a human, a pilot? Um, it might be a little bit more. I I do think that in order to get there, like if you had somebody on the ground that you could talk to as your pilot, who was guiding you, there was some sort of human interaction that you can be remotely. You know, that's fascinating in that way. Um, so you wrote an article which I love zoom did you?
Speaker 2:was that your title? Their taxis zoom zoom, zoom, zoom, did you? Uh? Yeah, you talked about the societal implications. Um, I've done some scenario work in that, but I'd love to hear there's a chicken and the egg factor. So if you kind of deeply think about it, if you're listening to this and you think about like where would they land, where would they pick up?
Speaker 1:right, that's right.
Speaker 2:Do we need to build the infrastructure in order to get it's like charging stations right? Like, do we need to build all the charging stations to successfully get people away from range anxiety? Do we need some sort of motivation factor to let them feel trust that this would have, like, that they would actually use it, because we could build all this and nobody ever used it? Or it becomes something that only a certain. It's a status thing, it's a wealth thing. It's like people having their own helicopter or their own you know private jet or aircraft. So, yeah, let's just, let's just, let's dive into that. Like the social acceptability, like chicken and egg, like what, what did, what did? What did you find in your work?
Speaker 1:So that was one of the most fascinating projects that we've done for the client. That's called the Consortium of Research and Innovation in Aerospace in Quebec, so we did the project for them. So Consortium of Research and Innovation, they're all about advancing research and innovation, basically within different partners and aerospace partners, and one of the elements that the board has noticed in the past was that the aerospace companies they always talk about their technology but they never talk about how that technology is going to be implemented.
Speaker 2:I personally would like the airlines to just make sure the headphone jacks work. That would be great, like the TV screens and the headphones.
Speaker 1:That would be Just that. Let's work on that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, let's just keep that working yeah.
Speaker 1:So they asked for the CREAN to look at, well, what would be the enabling conditions, the social acceptability conditions, for air taxis basically to fly. So air taxi here we have to be a little broader, so meaning that it's aircrafts, most of them. They're automated. Sometimes they can be not necessarily 100% automated. They can be hybrid or half hybrid and running on fuel.
Speaker 1:Uh, they're mostly called e-vitals, so they are uh so they, they, uh, they are uh, electrical, vertical landing and take off. So, basically, this is what it means is that they they take off like helicopters, they have rotor crafts, they don't glide. So that's one thing that is very important and this is a massive element in terms of security and safety. And they are in the altitude that it's in control and non-control airspace, so meaning that when they are above the ground, most of them they're going to fly over cities, but they are inside that city airspace. So this is a completely new system and, just like what you were mentioning is that it basically means that you're going to send people to the moon. It's the same effect, because the entire infrastructure it doesn't exist. The communication systems, they don't exist yet. How are you going to get to that? Vertiport this is what it's called it doesn't exist yet. So all the infrastructure that is needed for that system to exist, it's not there yet. So all the infrastructure that it's needed for that system to exist, it's not there yet.
Speaker 1:And meanwhile, the industry thinks that in 2042, they expect to have a complete system of flying eVTOLs, or flying aircrafts going from points to points that are going to be fully autonomous, so that it's about 15 years from now. What we found is that it might not be the case just because the regulations are going to be so important, but then, just because when you're a startup in that space you need to have that, you're going to be the first one breaking all the rules. So, basically, you're going to talk to the government to have the regulations in your favor, you're going to have the city now to have your infrastructure and so on. You're going to have the communication set up. So it's going to be a lot of different hurdles to get there and meanwhile the city.
Speaker 1:They're not prepared for that many of them. So we're based on research in Montreal and Montreal this is not part of the plan. They don't see this type of mobility as solving anything that they need to solve in terms of, in terms of their needs. So the industry, most of them. When you look at how they see social acceptability, they come up with seven to eight criterias, and the first one would be noise. It has to make zero noise. Different social acceptability criteria instead of seven 62.
Speaker 1:62 criteria of social acceptability.
Speaker 2:That's a long list.
Speaker 1:Well, they're divided into groups, For example, governance, political criteria, and for us, the most important criteria was the value proposition.
Speaker 1:For us, we were not able to see what was the clear value proposition that the new means of transportation has, and I think that one thing that is really important is that we use Corinne Gendron, who's an expert in social acceptability, and we use her definition, and her definition of social acceptability is the public assent project or public policy resulting from the collective judgment that this decision is superior to known alternatives, including the status quo.
Speaker 1:So I think one of the most important elements here in that definition is including the status quo, meaning that you can do nothing and that's good. So here we really need to be solving a a problem that it's known and that it's validated and that users, uh, feel that it's very important. And for many of the projects that we're seeing at the moment, they're not there, like they don't have a real problem that it's validated. And in 15 years from now or 20 years from now, when the environment is going to be massively impacted by the environmental crises that we have right now, well, this priority is going to be compared to other priorities that governments and people have, like, for example, pension funds, healthcare being adaptable clean water and investments in urban air mobility or in advanced air mobility and building the entire infrastructure.
Speaker 1:Is that going to be on the top of the list of the other people the politicians and so on, the politicians and so on or is it going to be, well, just making sure that we adapt to the environmental crises right now and making sure that we have water and that we have food?
Speaker 1:So I think we have to be extremely realistic when we plan out that technology in the future and what it means in 15 to 20 years from now. I'm not saying that the technology is not going to happen. This is not what I'm. This is not what I'm saying. I'm saying that we have to be really careful what projects we think that are valuable and where we want to invest our money and resources. Some of them, they absolutely make sense and some of them, let's say, in 15 years from now, when we have people who want to ride, extremely wealthy people with their Gucci bags on top of their house, while people they have to make a lot of sacrifices and, you know, not ride an airplane. Well, how does it compare to that use case? And some of these use cases do not make sense in terms of the future world that we're going to live in.
Speaker 2:World that we're going to live in. I've been seeing if I were to look back and look forward, this space, this flying car space, goes in like 20-year chunks. So earlier, like in the 80s, you had the taller, taller, the flying car car. It was like moller moller flying car, I think this red. They could only get it tethered, it could never be controlled. It was like and I just see the, you see these monstrosities of like throwing wings on cars and making them like because it's the paradigm of the now. It's like trying to explain having mobile phones when everything was pay phones. It's like people can't get out of, it's like the paralysis of the present. And then that was just like trying to get something, an existing thing, to go up a car.
Speaker 2:In the early 2000s, when I was working on stuff, it was around uh, very light jets. So it was a smaller, much smaller uh aircraft than like a learjet or a citation, but it was single pilot operator, which was huge in terms of cost and it had a range of about a thousand miles, but it was still using the existing general aviation infrastructure. Like you know, just there's 5,500 of them in the United States that can handle out of 18,000 airports they can handle that kind of craft versus the 50 that handle the commercial aircraft now and that's all hub and spoke. But that was kind of staying within that kind of paradigm With the eVTOL it's not there, but's you can have it, because we also had the last mile issue. If you get to this remote airport, how do you get to your, how do you get to where you ultimately need to be, right, uh, you know, now we have uber. Didn't have that back then, so now we have them to solve the noise issue we still have. We also have the trust issue we have in I, my work and I worked on uh studies for for Europe as well as some other companies, and we found three major use cases.
Speaker 2:One was intercity travel, moving across places. That a good example of this is the LA basin. Trying to go from Santa Monica to Burbank is a mess. Reach LA basin. That, like trying to go from like Santa Monica to Burbank, is like a mess, it's a nightmare so you might want. Or Dallas Metroplex, like these huge kind of sprawled cities. Then there's city to ex-suburb, which is like I live in Boston, so like in the countryside, western Massachusetts. There's no real trains to get here. It's a long trip, right, especially if you're trying to get to an airport and you want to leave Logan. You could go from there and get to Logan. So there's that. And then there's the regional city to city. So instead of me trying to drive to Bar Harbor, which is six hours, trying to fly there, I'd have to go through, like Cleveland, like I could just go take an hour business trip and go straight up. So it had.
Speaker 2:It has its business cases, but again it's like who will lead the way? The noise issue, we have a propulsion issue, we have energy issues. We have a lot of things to solve still, but it's one of those things. I think we're going to continually punch at it. I think we're going to continue. I think it's going to be another cycle. You know, like Punch at it, I think we're going to continue. I think it's going to be another cycle. We've made things further than the last time, but we're still not there. I think you're probably looking at 2050.
Speaker 2:I think also societally, once we have self-driving cars and people can feel trust without a driver, then we might be able to talk about aircraft, but right now, no way, no way. Yeah, I mean, I just I don't think people have that trust for it. But I'm a pilot, so I have a different, biased perspective. So, you know, I could take over the control if I needed to, you know, but not a lot of people could do that, right. And is it going to fly at 2,000 feet over everybody you know? Is it going to fly at 2 000 feet over everybody you know? Is it going to fly at a certain you know airspace path? Uh, that's yeah anyway. Yeah, thought thoughts, you know, reaction to that, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:so the thing is we asked the uh, urban planning and also. So transportation experts talk about this and they do not see this as a viable grain solution to mobility problems. They do not. They just see this as an extension of the traffic problem into the air. So that's their point of view. They do not see this as a good solution just because of the capacity issue.
Speaker 1:So, for example, most of these eVTOLs, they're going to fly three to four passengers. Sometimes they're going to go up to 20. Well, it's nowhere near the capacity of a high-speed train. It's never going to come to the comparison. So then these people are going to say, well, let's talk about the real problem. And the real problem is the way that we design our cities. We have no village network, no density anymore, and let's talk about the, the, the, the transportation, the mass transit options that we have for our people. Is it good, is it not? Most of them? They're not good. In North America, when you talk to, when you talk about cities that are newer, for example, los Angeles has a massive problem and in terms of capacity, for the way that we modeled Montreal, in 2040, we arrived at capacity between zero and 125 passengers per hour, so which is almost nonexistent compared to mass transit.
Speaker 1:So metro, buses and so on. So if you're trying to solve that transit issue, I don't think it's going to be with flying cars and it's impossible that you're going to be able to replace one highway lane. If you replace an entire highway, you would need more than 6,000 eVTOL in the year at the same time. So it's just impossible that it's going to happen.
Speaker 2:Well, I think that you go ahead. No, I was going to respond to that.
Speaker 1:No, no, please.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, there's a couple of things with trains is a lot of the infrastructure required? There's no, no imminent domain in the air, so you can also go three-dimensionally up and down in terms of grid and airspace. Certain spaces we can't break through or we would well, we'd lose our license but the violation or the possibility for accidents I mean, just look at what happened in Washington DC with the helicopter, the Black Hawk helicopter that was it had a ceiling of 200 feet and it broke that and it put itself straight in line and that's a long. That's a whole other thing. But you're right, I think they're ill prepared. Cities are ill prepared for it.
Speaker 2:But when I think about the uses of the future, the scenario work I've done, we, we came up with this kind of almost like, if you think of this show, ultra carbon, where, like the really wealthy live like in the cloud, they live up, high up above the cities and and though they in there, that's a whole nother show.
Speaker 2:If you haven't seen it's amazing show, but I call them skylanders and flatlanders, like people that were living. It's almost like you think about the other movie is the fifth element, like there's, there's people that live at certain altitudes. They never come down like they. There's almost this physical stratification you know, you think of the Titanic, right, you had third class on the bottom of the ship, second class, first class, like there's almost like a class structure physically could manifest in the design of our cities. If this stuff isn't, I think, planned properly and that was not dystopian, but it was more like this is how people would think if they could afford it and they could go higher, there'd be businesses, there'd be things up there that they would never have a need to go down right.
Speaker 2:So that's another thing that's interesting. It's like we talk about urban sprawl. There's also urban sprawl upward with this that we haven't really even considered yet. We talk about the suburban sprawl and the growth, but there's a high likelihood maybe not even in America, but cities like in Malaysia or like Dubai, things that will just continually rise. What are your thoughts on that?
Speaker 1:that's exactly that. Uh, we, we, uh, we look at different uh articles on that. They, they talk about this. They talk about people not even going to to the regular uh city life. They just hop on their helicopter or they hop in their aircraft and then they go straight home in the suburbs or in the country so they never get into contact with real issues. So, for them, they don't even have the the aware of what people, real people, live. So that stratification of of chances, but also of issues, and uh, and that's why they, the some people talk about this as a threat for democracy, and I can see that it's uh, it's uh, you know, people not even sharing their, their, um, their fellow people's concern and reality. And we can already see that with the big tech billionaires not even sharing the basic concerns of real people on the ground. So that could only be exacerbated by different technologies. They have an impact for sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a topic that I'm sure we're going to revisit a lot. Your work, you lead the global network, kind of come back to design itself itself. But you have to have a culture of innovation, right. I mean, even if things like this might they do help with the strategic planning like, do you make the investments or not? Like how do you? But let's talk about creativity and just forward thinking. Like, how do you, how do you encourage that, how do you foster that in in the war, in the work and leading the work?
Speaker 1:Well, I think the first thing is that we have to have people come together, and for us it's to have them share their thoughts and projects and to feel that they have a safe space, also within the company, to be with like-minded people, with designers and so on. So I think also fostering that place is for them to not having to battle the politics around innovation and creativity, politics around innovation and creativity. I think these days it's getting more and more difficult sometimes to to, to work and to that space when things are getting more and more operational. So you, so you have to, so you need good people who are going to play the political game so that you can do the right innovation work behind the scenes. And when I talk to people in the industry, they say that the pendulum now it swings back to you know things very operational, very the day-to-day, uh, not so much future work.
Speaker 1:Yet you, you, you as well yes, it's.
Speaker 2:A lot of designers have been laid off. A lot of the design functions have been cut away. Yeah, I see, I see a retooling and a realignment right now, like people are trying to figure out is Gen AI going to take away everything? Is it going to solve things? What is it really going to do? Realistically, productively, right? And then, how do I hire skill sets around that? And that's where a lot of I'm talking to a lot of designers that they spent 20 years doing wireframes and UX skill sets around that, and that's where a lot of I'm talking to a lot of designers that you know they spent 20 years doing wireframes and UX and but I can use tools that can give me a lot of it already.
Speaker 2:So the question becomes what is the skill sets that people need when they're creating? I mean creativity, empathy, I mean but, but the but there's the tool set itself that I think is being reworked, but also the way that people approach ideation, the way people approach prototyping, creating is also changing companies. Now it's easy for them to just build things, maintain things, do this, do what they kind of pull back. But what I think the advantage is with, like what the listeners here, what we all do is innovators and some are futurists, some are, you know, aspiring some. I think we're all futurists in some way.
Speaker 2:I think it's a of like, how do we get people into a different mindset? I think that's our skill. Our skillset is also when it comes to just designing something. We have to think in terms of probabilistic instead of just straight out, like straight journeys. It used to be just a straight, step-by-step journey. It's a lot of different ways. You kind of, you know like, choose your own adventure as you get to answer a problem and that's the way people may interact with it. And I think you know that gives me to like, you know, kind of the beginning of our conversation, you were having challenges getting into the space, and most people do, because it's like you have to build a portfolio, you have to work.
Speaker 2:You can't get a job without experience. You can't get experience without a job. Right, that's never going to change. But if you're talking to designers, futurists, people that are looking to create, what would you tell them now? What should they be working on building? What should they be learning? What should they be doing to get to get you know, to work in their space?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think what's important is that we focus on the basics and the focus on the things that are never going to change with, with the. So, for example, you were talking about wire framing and so on. For me, I see this as were we strategic enough doing that? Did we build that skill set to influence with that, and have we been able to uh steer the company or the uh the organization in a direction that makes sense? Or it was just uh for you know, for for getting food and bread on the table? So to me, that was that was not probably the most impactful way that we could have done, uh, done the work. So then, I'm always trying to see how we can be more impactful and how we can make sure that we have our own voice, and to me, this is not clear how people they bring their own voice and they are truly disruptive with what, with what they're doing. Are they building their own mindfulness? Are they staying true to their point of view? Do they bring a point of view on the table? Or it's just that they're stealing point of views from other people and then matching the different point of views until it becomes one, and matching the different point of views till it become one, and so it feels to me that these days, it's much more important to develop your own style and your own point of view and what is truly unique that you bring, and for that so it's going to be, you know, communicating with impact, being able to see what people cannot see.
Speaker 1:Ai is never going to be able to look at. You know, two different points that are that do not have a lot of how you say that that they're extremely weak. Like if you have two different points that are extremely weak, like that abductive thinking of saying, oh, I can put this one plus this one together and that makes sense. No, like, sometimes the AI is just going to take the points that have the most, is just going to take the points that have the most. They're most redundant, and then they're going to repackage something about this, and then they're going to, and then the AI is going to make a conclusion out of it.
Speaker 1:The thing is, how can you use that and then be able to be extremely disruptive to what you're proposing? And what's hard now is that, because you're proposing something that is very different, you're going to go against the mainstream and against the current flow and you're going to have to be strong enough to hold it and be able to stay into that discomfort, which I think this is the most. It's one of the hardest things for people to do Stand their ground, being able to see that this is a really good vision, try to make it real and convince other people and if you see that it doesn't work, that you're still strong enough to keep pushing as an innovator again and again, again, against the current flow, and this is a very tough skill set. No way I is going to be able to do that. I don't think, and have a real human performance, you know.
Speaker 2:When you look back at things, you know the legacy question I always like to ask is how do you want your work life things to be remembered? I always like to ask is how do you want it, how do you want your work life, the things to be remembered, like the impact you have on the world? It's not that just yeah Well yeah, so.
Speaker 1:So I think it's. It's like I think I want people to to just to remember that, remember that, yeah well, katherine marched the beat of her own drums and she uh tried to move the needle just a little bit, uh, and showed us that it was possible to do it because she has the strength to do it. So, so it was almost like a guiding light for us to have courage to do it. So I think I don't know if my work is going to be any better than anyone else, but I hope people are going to remember the courage and the strength that it needs to be an innovator these days For sure.
Speaker 2:That's wonderful. So if people want to find you, where do they reach out to connect with your smiling face and your awesome personality, which is great? So where do people find you? I'm on LinkedIn, which is great.
Speaker 1:So where do people find you? I'm? I'm on LinkedIn, happy. If people want to drop a line and uh and connect and uh for virtual coffee, uh and a chat, and if they're around Quebec or if I happen to be near a place around the world, cause I travel a lot, I would love to cash for coffee. So LinkedIn is a it's a good place for me.
Speaker 2:It's a good place. Well, just I want to say thanks for being on the show today and just it's been great having you. We're going to have you on again and have a great one.
Speaker 1:Thank you, steve. Thank you, steve, I'm going to see you, I'm going to see you in. May for the Foresight Gathering for Houston folks.
Speaker 2:Yes, I look forward to it. Thanks a lot.
Speaker 1:Me too.
Speaker 2:Thanks for listening to the Think Forward podcast. You can find us on all the major podcast platforms and at wwwthinkforwardshowcom, as well as on YouTube under Think Forward Show. See you next time.
